


The Heart of a Lion

by monimala



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the nebulous future of the GoT TV series and the books. Will probably be Jossed by <i>The Winds of Winter</i>. </p>
<p>
  <i>That they should meet again here, of all places in the seven kingdoms, is both the cruelest of jests and the most perfect of ironies.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart of a Lion

The Lady of the Eyrie is as fair as he is ugly. Like something out of a painting or a book, she is finely drawn, clad in the heavier silks of the northern climes and wreathed in her long copper hair. Her eyes, though, no artist could dream of capturing. The clear gray of a misty sky and full of years. He knows only half of what they’ve seen and dares not imagine the rest.

She waits for him at the foot of the steps, as if she has nothing but time as he totters unevenly on his short legs — even slower now that he’s gained a thousand new aches and a new appreciation for suffering. To think, once he’d considered the torments he’d survived at Casterly Rock the worst possible.

But they both know better now, don’t they? And that they should meet again here, of all places in the seven kingdoms, is both the cruelest of jests and the most perfect of ironies.

The hall is curiously empty on the eve of coronation. Purposely, he thinks, though he would dare not suggest such a thing to the future ruler of Westeros. The Iron Throne was removed just this morning. Hauled away to molder with the jaws of dragons and the corpses of kings. It is a new dawn. A new day. And all have come to King’s Landing to usher it in.

He is the only one left to remember the blood that slicked these floors.

No. No doubt she remembers as well.

A frightened child stripped and beaten at a monster’s whim.

A haunted girl bending to take a dwarf’s cloak.

Weeping. The endless weeping. They could’ve filled the seas with their collected tears.

They are both dry-eyed now, the Lady of the Eyrie and the Hand.

“Hello, my lord husband,” she says, softly, the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

“Hello, Sansa.” He tests the word he hasn’t spoken in years. “Wife.”

Her smile widens just enough to look genuine, and she inclines her head as he pauses on the last step — as tall at his full height as a man on his knees. As always, his only significant expansion lies in his breeches. But her, the woman he knew as Sansa Stark, she’s grown, matured into a beautiful woman, and there is no fear in her. Only grace. Only strength and steel.

Would that he could say the same. “I’m a great coward,” he admits, the scar across his face pulling as it hasn’t in years. A reminder of Blackwater. Of the past he will never truly escape.

Her gaze betrays nothing. A skill she no doubt learned here in King’s Landing. But she takes up a handful of her skirts and then extends her free fingers to him. It is more courtesy than he deserves. As is her indulgence. “A coward? Why would you say such a thing, Lord Tyrion?”

It should not be so easy to place his hand in hers. Just as it should not be so easy to make his confession. But, then, he has done far harder things. “I feared seeing you again, my lady.”

“Am I so horrible, then?” If he thought her smile a gift, then her polite laughter is a blessing.

“No.” He closes the scant distance between them. The time as well. “You are so very brave. So very beautiful. Through no fault of mine. Through no effort either.” It is he who laughs now, and the noise is anything but polite. “I was not a very good husband.”

“And I was too young to be a bride,” she says, simply. “Do not hold yourself accountable for those years, my lord. You protected me the only way you knew how and, in time, I learned to protect myself.”

He cannot mistake the note in her voice for anything but pride, and the emotion swells in his own cold, black heart as well. Yes. Sansa took care of herself. Sansa survived. His first bride, he lost. His lover betrayed him. But Sansa Stark, by the gods, saved herself and outlived all those who caused her pain.

Everyone but him. The Imp.

He brushes his thumb across the base of her palm, over the softness and the scars. That she has not yet let go of his hand is a thing of amazement. He knows why she came — political alliances, familial obligations, and so forth — but he does not understand this at all. “Why did you want to see me?”

“Do you truly not know, Lord Tyrion?”

She answers with a whisper of silks. With a bent head and the most chaste, most sweet, of kisses upon his pockmarked cheek. With the most oddly perfect words he’s ever heard. “Because a Lannister always pays her debts.”  

 

 

-end-

 

June 12, 2014


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